The present invention relates to the gelation or viscosification of organic liquids. More specifically, this invention relates to the gelation of organic liquids using ABA triblock polymers.
There are quite diverse applications for thickened or gelled solutions of polymers in organic liquids, potential applications for this process and the products derived therefrom will be evident in the instant application. Of particular interest, are the applications of the gelled organic liquids as pipe line pigs, automotive lacquers, and charcoal lighter fluids.
There are a number of physical and chemical techniques for preparing such systems. A formation of such gels, however, has usually required difficult compounding conditions. The gelling of organic liquids is normally achieved by the addition of moderate amounts of high molecular weight polymers. The degree of gelation is dependent on the level of polymer additive as well as the polymer molecular weight. As a consequence, the achievement of high viscosity via this approach requires either very high levels of additive or extremely high molecular weights of the additive component. High levels of additive are often uneconomical and they undesirably increase the viscosity and substantially decrease the number of uses for the liquid; the use of very high molecular weight additives gives rise to shear degradation which means that viscosities obtained are often unstable.
Accordingly, an object of this invention is to provide improved gelled organic compositions, which do not have the process limitations of compositions containing high molecular weight additives.
A further object of this invention is to provide a method for economically producing gelled organic compositions from readily available materials.
Other aspects, objects, as well as the several advantages of this invention will be apparent to those skilled in art upon reading the specification and the appended claims.